In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: SKILLSHARE: Two months of unlimited access to more than 20 thousand classes for just 99 cents For an All-Natural Painkiller, Try Holding Your Partner's Hand Moonquakes Can Last for Hours, Which Doesn't Bode Well for a Lunar Base ASMR Videos May Have Mental and Physical Health Benefits, Research Shows Want to support our show?Register for the 2018 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category):https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2018 Visit Bose to see the latest and greatest offerings in audio hardware so you can enjoy the best possible ASMR experience. If you make a purchase using the link, then Curiosity will get a share of the sale. Learn about these topics and more onCuriosity.com, and download our5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Want to support our show? Register for the 2018 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2018
Visit Bose to see the latest and greatest offerings in audio hardware so you can enjoy the best possible ASMR experience. If you make a purchase using the link, then Curiosity will get a share of the sale.
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/asmr-video-health-benefits-moonquakes-and-holding-hands-to-relieve-pain
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you'll learn about new research into the physical and mental health benefits of ASMR videos, why moonquakes could make it hard for us to build a lunar base, and a surprising benefit to holding hands.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Ashley, what's your go-to if you've got a lot of pain after a hard workout?
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, I'll take a hot bath. That's a good one. But also just having my cat on my lap is kind of nice.
CODY GOUGH: Very natural with the remedies.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Oh, no because if you take inflammation as part of your muscles rebuilding themselves. So if you take an anti-inflammatory, sometimes you can actually keep yourself from recovering as fast.
CODY GOUGH: Wow. Pro tip. Is that rooted in science?
ASHLEY HAMER: That is rooted in science.
CODY GOUGH: Well, we're not talking about that science today, but we are going to talk about a new research that shows that when you're in pain, holding hands with your partner could also make the pain less intense.
ASHLEY HAMER: Aww.
CODY GOUGH: This study has kind of a cool back story too. Pablo Goldstein was the lead author, and he said he got the idea for this experiment when his wife was giving birth. He saw that she was in a lot of pain. And when he held her hand, it seemed to help. So he was like, let's test this in a lab and see what happens.
So for the study published just last month, his team studied 22 straight couples in certain situations. Sometimes they were holding hands. Other times they were in the same room but not touching. And sometimes they were in different rooms. And in some situations, the researchers applied heat to the woman's forearm. The idea was to get about a 60 on a pain scale of zero to 100. That's not the amount of pain necessarily involved in a typical birth scene. And this study showed that holding hands really did help.
It's because of a thing called interpersonal synchronization. That's a physical phenomenon where we unconsciously sync our heartbeats, breathing, and brain activity with someone else's. In this study, synchronization in all areas was the highest when partners were holding hands. The woman's pain went down because she felt and absorbed her partner's lack of pain.
And here's an odd twist, the more empathetic men in this study, based on a questionnaire they took, had higher synchronization when the woman was in pain, meaning she had even more pain reduction. It'll take more research to figure out exactly why this is, but it's something to keep in mind the next time you want to help your partner feel less pain.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, have you ever been in an earthquake?
CODY GOUGH: I remember a light one, and it was like 6:00 in the morning after an overnight shift in Chicago, so I couldn't tell if I was just really tired or if there was an actual earthquake.
ASHLEY HAMER: A Chicago earthquake. Do you remember what year that was?
CODY GOUGH: It was late 2007 or early 2008.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow. OK. So I wasn't here. But I grew up in California, so I experienced earthquakes all the time.
CODY GOUGH: I was going to say, have you ever been in a big one?
ASHLEY HAMER: I've always been somewhere else when big ones have happened in my hometown, so I've been pretty lucky that way.
CODY GOUGH: Cool.
ASHLEY HAMER: But in general, they don't cause that much damage because we have good infrastructure, which is lucky.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: We're lucky that way. But Earth isn't the only thing in the universe that shakes. In fact, there are quakes on the moon, moonquakes. They're different than earthquakes, and they might make it hard for us to build a lunar base.
Here on Earth, earthquakes happen when tectonic plates move. The moon doesn't have tectonic plates though. So what gives? For different things can cause a moonquake. First, thermal moonquakes happen because of huge temperature changes during the lunar day. They happen a lot, and they last several days.
The second type are deep moonquakes caused by the tidal pull of the Earth, the opposite of what happens with our ocean tides. These happen even more often, as in NASA measured more than 7,000 in just eight years. The third type of moonquake happens when meteoroids hit the moon.
But the strongest by far is the fourth and final type of quake, shallow moonquakes. NASA measured 28 of these quakes in a five-year period, and a few were close to a 5.5 on the Richter scale. That can damage buildings here on Earth. But worse, they last up to 10 minutes with a slow tailing off that can last for hours. The moon is really dry, so it vibrates less like a sponge and more like a tuning fork. It just keeps vibrating.
A severe shallow moonquake might just do a bit of damage to a lunar base, but the problem is how long it lasts. So the next step for scientists is to come up with flexible materials, calculate their fatigue threshold, and go from there. So if you're an architect or a materials engineer, there's your homework.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Just email us when you figure it out.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Build a lunar base in your spare time. [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: Lots of people are traveling this summer. But chances are, you're probably not going to the moon. However, you can learn about lots of really cool places here on Earth with our new Instagram account, Curiosity Travel. And we've already got more than 16,000 followers.
ASHLEY HAMER: And we got them with some help from today's sponsor. Skillshare is an online learning platform with more than 20,000 classes in business, marketing, design, technology, and more.
CODY GOUGH: That includes classes on growing your Instagram audience and other social media platforms. Our team got some tips from a class taught by a digital marketing expert. She's a published author who's worked with multiple Fortune 500 companies, and she's not the only pro on the site either. Skillshare classes are all taught by real experts in their field, or public motivational speakers.
ASHLEY HAMER: You can take classes for everything you're curious about or want to get better at, like social media audience growth, video editing, cooking, mobile development, and DIY arts and crafts. Our Curiosity Travel Instagram account is doing great, but so is my Twitter account-- thanks to a different social media influencer class I took. And now I'm crushing it on social media.
CODY GOUGH: You sure are, Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: But remember, Skillshare offers more than 20,000 classes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And now you can join the millions of students, like Cody and me, who are already learning on Skillshare. In a special offer for listeners like you, get two months of Skillshare for just $0.99. To sign up, visit skillshare.com/curious.
CODY GOUGH: Again, that's skillshare.com/curious for two months of unlimited access to more than 20,000 classes for just $0.99.
ASHLEY HAMER: One more time, that's skillshare.com/curious.
CODY GOUGH: Ashley, do you watch ASMR videos?
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm going to be honest. They kind of creep me out.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, they're nice. I'm glad that there's something out there for people to enjoy like that. But I think-- I don't know this for sure, and I need to try. But I think I might be creeped out by them because I might have ASMR. I experience ASMR.
CODY GOUGH: So you're prone to ASMR responses, and that is unsettling somehow?
ASHLEY HAMER: I might be. No promises. But yes, that is unsettling.
CODY GOUGH: I'm going to talk about a new study published last month that says ASMR videos have mental and physical health benefits, like you get these benefits just from watching the videos. It stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. And ASMR videos are super, super popular on YouTube. They're basically videos of someone making very, very subtle soft sounds with a super sensitive microphone. So you'll hear things like very soft whispering, like if I got really up close to my mic and then the podcast was like (WHISPERING) very soft whispering, like stuff like that. Did that freak you out?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, man. Sorry. [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES] Oh, gosh. Maybe I have this.
CODY GOUGH: Lip sounds like smacking and eating, clicking, tapping, hand and hair movements. You'll literally see a video of somebody running her hand through her hair. But the mic picks up all the really soft, subtle sound in stereo. It's really intense. And I'm not going to mess with the microphone settings to demonstrate too much of it. But people who are really into ASMR videos claim that you get a tingling sensation, or you feel more relaxed from watching them.
So for this study, researchers showed ASMR videos to two groups of participants. One group said they experience ASMR, and they react to it. And the other group didn't. Well, participants who said they were triggered by ASMR showed a greater drop in heart rate and a big increase in positive emotions, like relaxation and feelings of social connection. The reductions in heart rate were comparable to other stress-reducing activities, like listening to music and meditating.
There is a lot more research to be done since this is the first big study to really show this, but someday ASMR could be used as a medical treatment for insomnia, anxiety, depression, or chronic pain. If you're curious, just search for ASMR videos on YouTube. They are not hard to find.
ASHLEY HAMER: I think I'm going to have to.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, boy.
ASHLEY HAMER: I think we would have to put this to the test.
CODY GOUGH: I watched clips of one when I was writing this article.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: But that's as far as I've gotten. So I'll let you know. We'll report back.
ASHLEY HAMER: Read about these stories and more today on curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
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